The Japanese Language Study Thread

This is a collaborative thread idea by PA user Bantam19 and I, started to enrich our understanding of the Japanese language and culture, but mostly language. Bantam19 is taking actual Japanese classes and I'm teaching myself through the internet via this site (which I highly recommend despite not having learned anything substantial yet): http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/.

Here's an introduction message from Bantam19:

I lawled because the end of the url is "lolz"

I think more what Slarti is describing isn't the typical "it sounds like this foreign language is so fast!" but that when converting Japanese to English the sentences wind up longer and thus English dub actors need to speak quickly to keep the dialogue in time.  This is probably because in Japanese a lot of information is omitted when speaking (and writing for that matter).  Things like pronouns are hardly ever used, especially when talking about oneself.  So the English dub might come out like "Yesterday I saw you go into the store, but I never saw you come out" the Japanese was probably something like "Yesterday, you into store saw, but never saw out come".  So ya, that's my best guess.

I hope that made sense. I'm working on mapping the hiragana symbols with the sounds in my mind by translating each word individually. I'm fairly certain that my grammar is completely off because I haven't studied any grammar yet.

You must not have the Japanese language fonts installed on your computer.